Google awards Chicago-based Feeding America $1.6 million grant

How Chicago-based Feeding America is using technology and help from Google to get food to those who need it

A new Google grant will help a Chicago organization fight hunger with algorithms.

Hunger relief charity Feeding America announced it has received a $1.6 million Google Global Impact Award to support a platform designed to connect excess food with the people who need it. Google is awarding $15 million this month to organizations using technology for good, according to its company blog.

Feeding America, a network of 200 food banks in the U.S. that serves 3.3 billion meals annually, said its cloud-based Online Marketplace platform launched this year. With the new funding, the organization hopes to use the platform to recover food from foodservice companies, restaurants and convenience stores that would ordinarily go to waste.

Time and safety risks pose challenges when it comes to getting perishable food to mouths instead of landfills, the organization said. Often, Feeding America has to pick up a food donation and take it to one of its food banks, which then distribute the food through pantries and meal programs. The Online Marketplace aims to in more instances eliminate those middle steps.

“The Online Marketplace tries to figure out how to move the food more expediently,” Feeding America spokesman Ross Fraser said. “We’re able to get it directly from the donor to the place that’s going to hand it to the hungry person.”

The funding will facilitate smaller-scale donations of highly perishable food, which needs to get eaten fast. If a cancelled party at a hotel resulted in 200 pounds of untouched lasagna, for instance, that donor could post the food online, and the Marketplace would use an algorithm to find a nearby agency that could safely pick up, store and serve the food while it’s still fresh.

“There are new donors that have come online to our network that we’ve never been able to service before because of this Online Marketplace — convenience stores, restaurants, food service entities, you name it,” said Dan Krohm, Feeding America’s vice president of strategic initiatives.

Many pick-up donations are expensive and logistically tricky, making it tough to justify sending out a truck for 30 pounds of a product, Krohm said.

“It’s relatively expensive to run those types of operations,” Krohm said. “We need a big fleet of trucks that run around to all these stores and pick up product.”

The funding will also help Feeding America better collect and analyze data so it can see where it should direct food donations. Feeding America still oversees the donation and delivery process to ensure food is safe.

The organization said that so far 16 food banks are live on the site and 24 are training. Eventually, Feeding America projects the Online Marketplace will help provide 740 million more meals per year.

One in seven Americans, more than 46 million people, including 12 million children, rely on food pantries and meal service programs to feed themselves and their families, according to a new study released by Feeding America.

One in seven Americans, more than 46 million people, including 12 million children, rely on food pantries and meal service programs to feed themselves and their families, according to a new study released by Feeding America.